Graham regarded her with a mix of skepticism and obvious amusement. “Sergeant, if you ever tire of police work, you might try your hand at writing mystery novels.”
“You’re too kind, sir.”
“Besides,” Graham added, “how could she know that we’ve discovered so much about her financial situation?” When Janice shrugged, Graham raised a finger, his eyes wide. “Aha! Jack Wentworth! He’s secretly playing for both sides!”
Janice blushed a little. “Leave Jack out of it, sir. He’s doing no such thing.”
Graham’s serious demeanor gradually returned. “I mean, it could be a lot more innocent. Just two idiots taking a boat out for a joyride.”
“At night?” Janice pointed out.
“Sure,” Graham replied. “Nice and quiet, a bit of fresh air…”
“In winter?” she said next.
It was Graham’s turn to shrug. “Alright. People traffickers, how about that? You know, those gangs who bring in migrants for exorbitant fees. They’ve got a boat load of refugees, and they’re trying to make it to the mainland.”
“Via Jersey?” Harding said.
Graham thought quickly. “Just for a refueling stop.”
“What about drug-running?” Harding asked.
“Oh, good one,” Graham said. Then he paused for a moment. “Has there been much of that around here?”
Before Janice could answer, the phone went again. Graham picked it up, glad for something to do.
“Roach.” Graham listened for a moment. “You’re where? Shelton Avenue?” And then he groaned. “Hodgson.”
Janice recognized the name. “The lad who’s always wandering off at night? Is he missing again?” she asked.
Graham listened for another minute, thanked the Constable, and replaced the receiver. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Charlie Hodgson and his mate, Rob Boyle are missing, along with their boat.”
“My father used to swear he’d put a lock on the outside of my bedroom door if I…” Janice began, but noticed that her boss was deep in thought. “Sir?”
He looked up at her. “There’s bad news, and there’s bad news.”
“Bad news first, please,” Janice said.
“Our theory about intercepting the imminent disposal of the remaining Beth Ridley evidence and wrapping the case up beyond a shadow of a doubt appears to have fallen apart,” he said. “There’s no way that these two are involved in something like that. They’re seventeen and barely have a functioning brain cell between them.”
Janice breathed a loud and sincere sigh of disappointment.
“And the other bad news?”
“They have about as much seafaring experience as I have.”
“How much is that, sir?”
“None.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“RIGHTO, SIR, I’LL tell them,” Barnwell said into the radio. He had earlier ruefully considered that after all his high tech efforts down at the marina, it was a simple sighting by a fisherman setting up for an early start the next day that had set them on the trail of the rogue boat. Now his hopes of solving the Beth Ridley case had come to naught, too. It just didn’t seem fair.
The lifeboat crew consisted of volunteer, well-trained mariners with the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, whose mission was to help those in distress around the British coastline. They had been called out by the Jersey Coast Guard. It was too dark and windy for the spotter plane to be of any use, and the mainland helicopter was too far away.
“Understood,” Will Ryan, the captain of the lifeboat said after Barnwell explained what he’d learned from Graham about the identities of the two they were chasing. “I’m not a gambling man,” Ryan explained, “but I’d wager a bottle of scotch that the Sea Witch is not having a good time. From your description, it sounds like she should have stayed on her boat ramp. I just hope we get there in time.”
Ryan imagined their troubles while scratching a bushy, brown beard that his wife had once described as “enthusiastic.”
The George Sullivan, named after the lifeboat’s designer, ploughed handily through the waves, keeping up a brisk but not yet nausea-inducing twenty-six knots. She was a capable, 53-foot vessel, in the unmistakable orange of the RNLI, with two powerful diesel engines. The crew were seasoned, dedicated volunteers, all holding down jobs on the mainland that allowed them to be called out at any time of the day or night to rescue those who got into trouble out in the cold, coastal water.
The George Sullivan’s radar scanned the horizon ahead while a crewman broadcast a repeated message over the emergency channels, requesting the Sea Witch respond and cut its engines. So far, there had been no reply.
Barnwell answered his radio once more and then relayed another message to the captain. “One of the young men on the Sea Witch has a very irate mother. She’d prefer that we pick him up and bring him home, but ‘only if it’s not too much trouble,’” Barnwell reported.
“Someone’s in for an earful,” a crewman observed.
“If he’s not drowned himself by now,” Barnwell pointed out.
There came a loud, clear call from the lookout positioned on the lifeboat’s railing. “Light ho!”
Captain Ryan followed the lookout’s pointing arm, and saw a tiny glimmer on the horizon. “Good eye, man! Hang on, everyone.” The lifeboat lurched as Ryan demanded full power from her twin diesel engines. With a surge of noise and power, the George Sullivan rocketed over the waves toward the light, while her radar confirmed that this was a small, seafaring craft and not one of the big container vessels that routinely passed through the channel.
“Sea Witch, Sea Witch, this is the George Sullivan, are you receiving me, over?”
The only reply was static.
“Sea Witch, approaching from your northeast. Please cut your engine and signal with a flare.”
“I wouldn’t be too hopeful,” Ryan said. “If they’re daft enough to put to sea in a rusted wreck…”
“Actually,” Barnwell felt it fair to say, “they nicked a box of flares the other week. And life jackets, for that matter.”
The lifeboat’s captain gave him a very strange look. “Just what kind of people are these?” he asked, mystified.
“Teenagers,” Barnwell replied simply.
“Ah.”
“Sea Witch, Sea Witch, this is the George Sullivan. We are to your northeast, five hundred yards and closing. Please signal.”
Moments later, as the lifeboat’s powerful main light found the cobalt blue vessel, the reason for the lack of reply became obvious. “Oh, hell,” Ryan muttered. “She’s down at the bow.”
Barnwell struggled to view the scene through the front windows. The lifeboat’s spotlight caused extraordinary glare, and he could barely make out anything amid the choppy waves. “What does that mean?” he asked, blinking at the sudden brightness.
“She’s bloody well sinking,” Ryan reported, “just like I warned you. She won’t be above water for much longer. Pete, get on the loudhailer. The crew, for want of a better word, must be around here somewhere. Names?”
“Uh… Barnwell thought for a moment, “Charlie and Rob.”
Pete grabbed the ship’s bullhorn and headed outside to the railing. Barnwell heard the call, which would have been audible a mile away. “Charlie? Rob? This is the RNLI. Shout if you can hear me!” Pete’s day job as a Phys Ed teacher at the high school in St. Helier gave his raised voice an insistent clarity that was impossible to ignore.
Barnwell’s radio crackled. “Constable?” He cursed under his breath. Barnwell had promised Graham updates every ten minutes, and he was long overdue.
“Yes, sir. Sorry. We’ve arrived at the location of the Sea Witch, but she’s taken on a lot of water. There’s no sign of the boys.”
Barnwell heard the DI swearing on the radio. “I wish we could do more to help you, son,” Graham finally said. “Is there no sign of them at all?”
“Not at the moment, sir, but we’re on it. I’ll giv
e you an update shortly.”
Captain Ryan ordered the boat’s engines to be cut, the better to hear faint yells across the water. “Start a search pattern with the light,” he ordered. “Focus to the landward of the wreck.”
“Why is that?” Barnwell asked. His best recourse, he knew, was to simply stay out of the way, but he also hoped to be helpful.
“Because, nine times out of ten, people moving away from a sinking ship will head in the direction of land, even if it’s miles away.” Ryan was as anxious for news as he was angry at the two young idiots who had risked their lives in a hopeless vessel. “Why the hell didn’t they get a distress call out?”
“Maybe their radio broke,” Barnwell offered.
“Well, I’ll be very glad to be wrong, Constable, but at the moment it looks as though you and I are going to be delivering some bad news later tonight,” Ryan said, thudding the console with a curled fist. “And I bloody well hate it, when we lose people out here. And for no reason at all! It’s not as though we’re trying to get a convoy past the U-boats or navigating through a sodding hurricane. I mean, we’re six miles off Jersey.”
The island was off to their right, little more than a long, thin band of distant lights now.
Pete kept calling as the whole crew silently waited for a response, scanning the seas around them for a sighting of the lads. “Come on, you silly buggers,” Barnwell muttered to himself. “Come on…”
The light swept back and forth, searching the area north of the sinking boat. “There!” Pete shouted.
Barnwell was at the rail before he knew it. “Where?”
Pete was gesturing with a straight arm. “Three points off port.”
That meant little to Barnwell until he saw movement within the cone of light thrown by the big lamp.
“Jesus,” he breathed. “Charlie? Rob? Can you hear us!” he called out, as loud as he could.
“Here!” they heard. It was a faint, tense, panicked sound. “Over here!”
The spotlight had picked up Rob, his head and shoulders bobbing above water buoyed by his stolen life jacket.
“Can you see the other one?” Ryan demanded, now ordering the lifeboat’s engines to minimal power and steering her toward the flailing teenager.
“Rudder amidships and prepare to cut engines.”
As they approached, the Sea Witch began her final dive, her silent engines briefly facing the sky as the boat nosedived to the bottom.
“Okay, cut it now.” The lifeboat’s diesel engine died once more, and Pete tossed a rope to Rob, who immediately grabbed for it. “Good lad! We’re pulling you in.”
Ryan was becoming more and more agitated. “Where’s the other one?” he growled. “Get that searchlight moving again!”
It was Barnwell who saw Charlie Hodgson first. “There!” he shouted. “Christ, he’s drifted away. Get the…” But before Barnwell could even find the right nautical words, he found himself taking off his shoes and jacket.
“Oi, wait, we’ve got a…” he heard Pete saying behind him. But Barnwell slung a leg over the railing, took a deep breath, and jumped feet first into the English Channel.
The water was shockingly, unbearably cold. Barnwell surfaced hurriedly and roared out an oath worthy of a seasoned sailor and then swam hard in Charlie’s direction. The ship’s light had found the boy now, an incongruous, linear shape in this world of watery curves. He was resting high in the water, his orange life vest inflated, but he was facing away from Barnwell. And he wasn’t moving.
Barnwell heard splashes to his left as a rope was tossed into the water. He reached for Charlie’s life vest and spun the boy around.
Charlie lolled in the water, unconscious. His eyes were half-closed, only the whites visible. He was ghostly pale. “It’s okay, lad. I’ve got you.” Barnwell slid the rope around Charlie’s chest, and locked it in place. He signaled to the boat that had come in as close as it could.
Swiftly, the immobile teenager was dragged through the freezing water and pulled to safety. One member of the lifeboat crew immediately began chest compressions while the other prepared to winch Barnwell in.
Another rope was thrown to Barnwell. He grabbed it with frozen hands and locked it around his chest but as he turned and began to swim, he felt a strong tug as his line went taut before it slackened as the locking mechanism gave way. The rope was gone, splashing uselessly across the surface ahead of him.
“Bugger!” He tried to grab it, but he was losing the feeling in his arms. The cold was now seeping deep into him. Barnwell grasped at the surface, trying to push the water down and away, but it always rose again, shoving icy water in his face, chilling him down to the bone.
Dazed, he saw a hazy, fading figure at the rail of the lifeboat. Something flew into the air, but he hadn’t the strength to follow it. His legs felt unbearably heavy, his soaked clothes acting as anchors and dragging him down. He found that he was all but motionless, hovering above a chasm of freezing darkness that was pulling at him, insisting, demanding, tugging harder and harder…
Slap.
It was sudden, rude, and harsh.
“Again,” came a voice.
Slap.
“Oi!” Barnwell grumbled indistinctly. “Wossat all about, then?”
Slap.
“Stop!” he finally roared, his eyes blinking open as he raised himself up, only to find his progress impeded by four strong hands.
“Take it easy, Constable.” It was Pete and another crewman whose name he hadn’t learned. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Where am…” But he heard the sounds at once; the noise of the diesel motors, the waves sliding under the hull and lapping at the sides of the George Sullivan. Then came warm applause from the lifeboat crew.
“Welcome back, son,” Will Ryan said, handing Barnwell a big mug of steaming hot coffee. “Drink this. Slowly,” he warned.
Barnwell sat up on the comfortably padded stretcher that he had been laid on. Next to him were Rob and Charlie, pale and silent but conscious. Lifeboatman Pete helped to keep the thermal blanket wrapped around his chest and shoulders as the wet, chilled Constable reached out to take the mug. Though his features felt like they were chiseled from a block of ice, he managed a grin of gratitude. “Thanks, Captain.”
The older man chuckled. “I hope you’re not a teetotaler or anything, ‘cos there’s an enormous tot of navy rum in there.”
Barnwell noticed the aroma immediately, and it seemed to warm his whole being. “Just this once,” he said, taking a cautious sip and finding the coffee to be sweet, strong, and excellent, “I think we’ll be alright.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THEY WERE STANDING in front of the converted industrial buildings that were now home to many of Christiania’s inhabitants, a four-story, weather-beaten place with plenty of greenery planted outside. A couple of dogs were asleep in its shade.
“Can’t say I’ve ever been anywhere quite like this before,” Roach admitted.
“Can’t say I have, either,” Graham said. “Probably because this place is unique in all the world.”
Christiania, they’d found out via the Internet the evening before, was a self-administered commune, right in the center of Denmark’s capital city. Its independence was protected by the state, and the commune enjoyed the freedom to decide some of its own laws. This, as the two officers had instantly noticed upon arriving, included the legal and public consumption of marijuana.
“Can we, you know,” Roach asked a little awkwardly, “get a bit high from just being here?”
“Why do you ask, Constable?” Graham replied with a slight smile. He checked his phone once more. “Are we completely sure this is the right building?”
“I’m pretty sure this time,” said Roach.
Graham had instructed Roach not to wear a uniform or any insignia today, leaving him feeling odd and slightly naked. They were well outside of their jurisdiction, and Graham was keen to carry out this most delicate part of the investi
gation without unnecessary fuss. In this part of the city more than any other, uniforms would attract unwelcome attention and suspicion.
After working all through Sunday and into the early hours of Monday morning confirming that Constable Barnwell and the two teens were safe, Graham and Roach boarded a plane to London and from there another to Copenhagen. Both of them dozed off on each leg of the trip.
They awoke for the final time as the second aircraft landed smoothly in what was a considerably wet and dreary Copenhagen. Feeling as dreadful as the weather, they caught a taxi into the city center and immediately decamped to a local café. There they found the buttery, sweet pastries and steaming, strong coffee overcame their fatigue as they strategized the next part of their mission.
Roach had been in favor of informing their Danish counterparts of their visits and told Graham so during the previous evening. Graham had overruled him, and by the time they landed, he had persuaded Roach of the virtues of a more clandestine approach.
“If it really is Beth,” Graham had reminded the younger officer, “we’ve got no idea what her status is in Denmark. She might be staying here illegally, or with people who are wanted by the police, or she may even be wanted herself for all we know. If we show up with uniformed Danish cops, she might run, and then we’ll never find her again.”
Graham rang the intercom button for apartment 452, and only then realized that he had no idea what he was going to say if anyone replied. He blinked for a moment, thinking rapidly.
“Hvem der?”
Graham cleared his throat. “Er, yes. I’m here to visit Bettina,” Graham said. “Erm. We’re, erm…” Get it together, Dave, for heaven’s sake. “I called this morning?”
He’d called an automated service organized through her website, which let him leave a voicemail message. She had responded with a short email.
“The Englishman?” the voice asked. Bettina spoke without a distinctive Danish accent.
The Case of the Broken Doll (An Inspector David Graham Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 13
